Un-People. The conservative crusade to declare everything a “person”—corporations, fertilized eggs

[DonViejo]

Un-People

The conservative crusade to declare everything a “person”—corporations, fertilized eggs—will have disastrous consequences.

By Dahlia Lithwick

Last week, the Supreme Court agreed to hear Hobby Lobby Stores Inc. v. Sebelius and Conestoga Wood Specialties Corp. v. Sebelius—a pair of cases probing whether the religious rights of a for-profit corporate entity allow it to refuse to provide for employees insurance that would include certain forms of birth control. In so doing, the court may now be forced to reckon with the question of whether the same corporate personhood that includes the right to free speech also encompasses rights to religious conscience. In other words, Corporate Personhood is back! And this time, it’s got God on its side.

But corporations aren’t America’s only new people. States and the U.S. Congress are also attempting to expand the definition of personhood in a different direction: Anti-abortion activists are attempting to redefine “personhood” to include the potential personhood of a fertilized egg. If the so-called personhood bills and ballot initiatives across the country succeed, a day-old zygote would have the same legal status as a person, with sweeping implications for criminal law, reproductive rights, and access to birth control.

So pause for a moment with me to ponder what it means that some of the greatest civil rights battles of our era are being fought to extend personhood into the weeks prior to viability and the years after incorporation? What does it mean for actual human “personhood”—as well as for reproductive rights and corporate control—that, if the far right succeeds in stretching these two legal fictions to their illogical extremes, American “personhood” will begin at conception, diminish somewhat at birth, and regain its force upon incorporation?

A brief review: In 2010 the Supreme Court determined in Citizens United v. FEC that corporations can be treated as persons for First Amendment speech purposes, although the notion of corporate personhood certainly long predated the case. While the final outcome of Citizens United didn’t rest solely on the idea that “Corporations are people, my friend”—that was Mitt Romney’s gloss—it certainly celebrated the notion that corporations have complex moral, political, and social needs that must be expressed in the same ways as the rest of us, you know, human beings.

full article
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2013/12/hobby_lobby_and_corporate_personhood_the_alarming_conservative_crusade_to.html?wpisrc=newsletter_jcr:content

[unblock]

1. except, of course, you know, ... people.

[kestrel91316]

4. Oh they want wealthy white male people to be persons. Women, minorities, the poor......

definitely un-persons.

[unblock]

5. wealthy white male people can become their own corporations.

[question everything]

2. I like the usual comment

When a corporation gets executed (probably in Texas) then we can accept corporations as people. Maybe.

[Old and In the Way]

3. The logical consequence to zygote personhood will be mandatory webcams in every home and in every

room.

You can't protect the constitutional rights of these blasto-citizens if you don't know they exist! Hope the "small government" anti-abortionists like where they are taking this country.

[Cresent City Kid]

6. What next, corporate suffrage?

If they can have political and religious views and their donations equal speech, why not let them vote? This is ridiculous of course, but to me the status quo is ridiculous. Companies are like soylent green, they're made of people. All of these people from the CEO to the janitor have protected political rights. When the company exercises its new found political "rights", the janitor is not consulted. We are allowing artificial entities to participate in our democracy, without even making them bear the responsibilities of citizens like paying the standard income tax rate. (If we still had the draft, would we make them serve?)

Money does not equal speech, and even if it did, companies would not, er should not, be entitled to exercise it. There is insufficient outrage about this. If the individual members of a corporation have certain political views they should only be allowed to act on them as individuals.

As for zygotes, their protections end soon after birth. The quality of their education, diet and shelter are based on their parents income and the "You should have thought about that before you got born poor" rule goes into effect.